On page 120 of Kennedy & Nixon, Chris Matthews states the following:
“One important Democratic figure was still carefully keeping her
distance from the popular Kennedy. Eleanor Roosevelt, along with many
of her devotees, continued to dislike him, if for no other reason than
the undeniable fact that he was not one of them. The feeling was
mutual. ‘I always had a feeling that he always regarded them as
something apart from his philosophy,’ Charles Bartlett recalled. ‘I
think he regarded the liberals as the sort of people who ran like a
pack.’ Benjamin Bradlee, at the time the Newsweek bureau chief in Washington, whom Kennedy had met through Bartlett, agrees with the assessment. ‘He hated the liberals.’”
Earlier in the book, Matthews states that one reason that Eleanor
Roosevelt did not particularly care for John F. Kennedy was that Kennedy
liked Joe McCarthy. It was getting to the point, however, where
McCarthy was embarrassing even Kennedy. That’s an issue more than one
person has confronted: You may like or desire to be loyal to a
controversial person, but you also want (or even need) to build bridges
with people in order to advance or to have a sense of security, and you
find that the controversial person (or your association with him or her)
is burning whatever bridges you are seeking to build or to maintain.
Some have a strong sense of loyalty and choose to stick with the
controversial person, whereas others do not. And who knows? Kennedy
may have really thought that McCarthy was going too far!
Kennedy tried to appease the liberals, on some level. Even though he
and Nixon were friendly with each other and conversed rather
frequently, Kennedy said that he did not know Nixon that well. Kennedy
also said that his own political views were similar to those of Adlai
Stevenson, the liberal Democrat who ran for President in 1952 and 1956.
But Kennedy just couldn’t appease certain prominent liberals. Eleanor
Roosevelt tried to stop Kennedy from becoming the 1960 Democratic
Presidential candidate. But, of course, she failed.
I can identify with both Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Like
Eleanor Roosevelt, I can find myself grading people on whether or not
they are truly “one of us.” Unfortunately, I’ve been this way whatever
ideological persuasion I may have happened to hold: right-wing
conservatism, evangelicalism, theological and political liberalism,
etc. But, like Kennedy, I’ve found myself unable to fit into certain
groups. I’ve felt as if joining a particular speech community would
require me to compromise myself and my desire for an open mind, and so I
tend to alienate true believers of various persuasions. I doubt that
this is the only reason for my social difficulties, but I can’t downplay
its importance. People claim that, if one wants friends, one should
seek people with similar values or worldview. But what if I have a hard
time building bridges with people on the basis of values or worldview?